


The Sea and the Sky

by mikkey_bones



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 16th Century CE, Anthropomorphism - Freefom, Gen, Historical, Innuendo, M/M, Politics, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-03
Updated: 2011-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-20 01:51:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/207521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikkey_bones/pseuds/mikkey_bones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s more planning that goes into an alliance than battle plans, and Francis isn’t as mature as he wants to seem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sea and the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Written a while ago for a gift exchange.

Francis commandeered the captain’s cabin and somehow made it fill with more light than it was ever meant to receive, Sadiq thought. All the windows, the portholes, whatever the infidels called them, were wide open, and the Mediterranean sunlight was pouring through them from the sea and the sky, and there were no shadows anywhere in the room. With so much sun one would think it would become unbearably hot, but an added benefit of the open windows was the fresh salt breeze. Although he had a powerful navy, Sadiq had never been particularly fond of the sea, but he sniffed it eagerly; to him, at that moment, it smelled of conquest and victory.

He glanced outside, where the coast of Africa was visible as a solid blue strip in the distance, and then back at the captain’s table, where Francis sat, a plate of pastries within easy reach of his right hand as he stared fixedly down at the map.

“Was I called here for a reason in particular?” Sadiq, who disliked being kept waiting almost as much as he disliked sailing, asked. He crossed the room to stand with a hand on the back of Francis’s chair, looking over his shoulder at the detailed map of the northern African coast.

“Our plans for conquest,” Francis said in his voice that was almost a man’s, but not quite. In human years, Sadiq supposed, he would be about eighteen – a man grown, and yet he sometimes acted so foolishly, boyishly. For the first time, he noticed that Francis was holding a pastry too, and tearing it apart with long, nervous fingers. The crumbs spilled on the map around the vicinity of Marrakech and Sadiq almost wanted to brush them off; the map was a thing of beauty.

He sat down instead. “What plans? We’re here, aren’t we?” He put his elbow on the table, on the map (over Malta), and leaned his chin on his hand. “Conquering Tunis, as ordered.” He grinned.

Francis shifted in his chair and brushed the pastry crumbs off the map and table in one impatient gesture – they spilled onto the floor where they would no doubt be ground into the beautiful red rugs Sadiq had ordered just for this ship, the French flagship, as a gift of goodwill. “I know, and Barbarossa is all I could have asked for.”   
__

_All you_ did _ask for; that and one hundred thousand gold pieces,_ Sadiq thought and let his twisted smile do the talking.

Either Francis caught his meaning or was naturally nervous; he chewed his lower lip and shifted in his chair. “I simply think we need to talk about this. The plans. _Our_ plans.”

“ _Our_ plans,” Sadiq repeated, leaning back in his chair, stretching out his legs, and removing his cloth mask. Francis looked relieved by the gesture and Sadiq remembered that concealing one’s face made the infidels nervous. He smiled grimly and folded the accessory in his hands, fingers lingering on the soft muslin. “We’re allies, right? We plan together. Unless you mean some other type of plan?” He raised an eyebrow.

For a moment, Francis was discomfited – but it was the briefest of moments and Francis was known among nations for his licentiousness, however pious his current king might be. “Not those types of plans, no,” he said with a raised eyebrow and an equally insouciant smirk. “But later, perhaps, we can talk of those plans?”

Sadiq chuckled. “Then what plans? Barbarossa has his fleet and you have your followers.” As the briefest flash of something – insult, anger, scorn – passed across Francis’s face, Sadiq bit his tongue and wondered if he had spoken too bluntly. “We’re capturing Tunis in Africa and then raiding the Italian coast. It’s a small step in a larger plan. Your king’s plan,” he added in case clarification was needed, for Francis’s sake.

“The Pope is displeased,” Francis said bluntly, finally ceasing his fidgets to lace his fingers together and fix Sadiq with a calm, blue stare. Idly he thought it very much resembled the color of the ocean outside the windows.

“Your religion isn’t my problem,” Sadiq thought and added, silently, _Allahu Akbar_. “Not your pope, your religious wars, or your fractured faith.”

Francis’s lips tightened. “So you do not have a problem allying yourself with the infidel?”

“You don’t have a problem working with the heathen?” Sadiq retorted. “The Turk; the ‘sworn enemy of Christendom?’”

To Sadiq’s surprise, Francis looked down at his hands. “That is what I am trying to decide,” he replied and the tone was as pensive as Sadiq had ever heard him use. Granted, they did not know each other well – he had only regularly seen Francis across the battlefield, after all, and oh, those glimpses of him were like watching a portrait grow older. First there was the boy, and then the scrawny young man, and then he grew taller, and then the Crusades ended for which Sadiq was of course thankful, as it gave him much needed time to organize his own affairs.

“It’s a little too late to get cold feet,” Sadiq said, leaning forward and placing his hand flat on the map, over Egypt. He bent low to catch Francis’s eyes, grinning crookedly. “I’m armed,” he added, “and ready.”

“You are not,” Francis retorted, tossing his hair back (resembling nothing more than a wild desert horse) and straightening, looking Sadiq in the eye. “Can you take nothing seriously?”

“I thought I’d be asking you that,” Sadiq replied, leaning back again in his chair. “From all I’d heard about you. But here we are, and you’re asking me.”

Francis tapped his fingers against the table, or rather against Marrakech, which was being greatly abused on the map that day. “You know what they call this?” A pause. “Us?”

Sadiq sighed. “What?” he asked, though he really did not care. That was something; after being isolated from western, _infidel_ politics for so long, there wasn’t much that bothered him. Unlike Francis, who looked much younger than he was and behaved quite immaturely, too.

“The sacrilegious union of the _Lily_ and the _Crescent_ ,” Francis spat with venom. “I, of course, being the lily.”

“Have I ever told you that your skin’s soft as a lily’s petals?” Sadiq asked, glancing up at Francis. “Or a tulip’s, but I think you’d like the former.”

Francis colored slightly and looked away. “That is not the point under debate.”

“’Scuse me,” Sadiq interjected again, polite as his gruff tone could manage. “What exactly is under debate? The integrity of this alliance? The reality of the hundred thousand gold coins my sultan gave you? The reality of this fleet, conquering Tunis and then the Hapsburgs?” He found that he was crumpling his mask in his palm; he opened his hand and smoothed it out with a finger.

For his efforts he received a flat blue stare, and Francis’s eyes no longer resembled the sea but the glassy sky above. “The point under debate,” he said, and then ducked his head again, this time resting it on his crossed arms. Sadiq leaned forward and was rewarded with the sight of Francis’s ears turning faintly pink. “I don’t know whether I like you or not.”

And that, Sadiq thought was why, he remembered, he disliked true alliances with these western infidels. They had a terrible tendency of acting like adolescents even when they were, in Francis’s case for one, approximately one thousand, five hundred thirty years old. Though he looked like a young man and so perhaps it was to be excused.

He stood. “Well. _I_ find you quite amusing. Young lily.” He walked to Francis’s side of the table, placed a hand on his shoulder. “I hope to strengthen ties with you, sometime soon.” He smiled, smirked really, and took his hand off Francis’s shoulder to replace his mask.

“Heathen,” Francis said, his voice muffled by his hands.

“Infidel,” Sadiq answered quite companionably, and left the room.   
****

**Author's Note:**

> The Franco-Ottoman Alliance was not the first time Christians and Muslims had worked together either militarily or economically, but it did mark the first official alliance between major powers; namely, the French under Francis I, and the Ottoman Turks, under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Both men considered themselves Renaissance monarchs, and both were threatened by the growing power of the Hapsburg family, which controlled (through Holy Roman Emperor Carlos V) all of Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and the majority of German territories. In the end, it lasted more than 250 years, until Napoleon I invaded the area.
> 
> If interested in the Franco-Ottoman alliance, [this document](http://dspace.wrlc.org/bitstream/1961/7189/1/PiccirilloAnthonyThesis.pdf) should be of interest. It elaborates the religious tensions found in the Franco-Ottoman alliance and gives a little more background history. It is important to note that the Protestant Reformation occurred less than a hundred years earlier, and Europe was still feeling the political and moral backlash of many religious wars. Many viewed France’s alliance with the Turks as a betrayal of Christendom. Ironically, King Francis I viewed himself (and wanted to be viewed) as one of the foremost defenders of the Christian faith. In fact, only years earlier, he had been planning yet another crusade.
> 
> Hayreddin Barbarossa, who Francis mentions once, was the leader of the Turkish fleet sent to harry the Italian coast and Tunisia during August of 1534. His position in the navy was equivalent to that of a fleet admiral, and his previous experience with the French included leading an embassy to the country in 1533. Among Turks and historians, he is still well remembered and respected, and according to Wikipedia, “In the centuries following his death, even today, Turkish seamen salute his mausoleum with a cannon shot before leaving for naval operations and battles.”
> 
> Tunis itself was conquered exactly 476 years ago today (August 16, 2010). Unfortunately it was won back with a comprehensive victory only the next year.
> 
> The 100,000 gold pieces Sadiq mentions were sent to Francis I by Suleiman so that he could form a coalition with England and several German states against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1533. Later, the French ambassador to Turkey, Jean de la Forêt, requested an additional one million ducats, and received it as well. On the other side of the arrangement, France presented Suleiman with gifts like [this](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Suleiman_Agostino.JPG).
> 
> This story in particular takes place before the alliance is officially formed, but after France and the Ottoman Empire have been working together for quite some time (about ten years). The alliance became official about two years later, when Jean de la Forêt negotiated agreements between the two countries in February of 1536.


End file.
